


if i gave you

by orphan_account



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Prostitution, Angry Blowjobs, M/M, Pimping Ain't Easy But It's Necessary
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-25
Updated: 2016-06-26
Packaged: 2018-05-23 05:29:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6106393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hux meets a very angry hooker.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The first time Hux sees the guy in the tiny blue nylon shorts, he doesn't think anything of it. Probably out for a run, though just at that moment he isn't running or breathing heavily or even looking particularly sweaty. He's not carrying a water bottle or anything either, and the shoes he's wearing are these narrow black lace-up things that look like stiff leather. Not running shoes. Maybe a little odd, but if Hux keeps thinking about that brief sighting- that moment when the guy looked up and their eyes maybe met for half a second-- it's only because Running Shorts is the kind of guy you remember even if you've only seen him once. Tall, conspicuous. Sticking out like a sore thumb. Dark hair and dark eyes and astoundingly fair skin and this look on his face- during that one moment when their eyes caught on each other-- like he's broiling fucking mad at Hux just for existing, like he's known him for millions of years in every past life clear down to the days of the early hominids and wanted to kick his ass in all of them. Obviously Hux doesn't know him from Adam, there's no way they know each other, it's just one of those unsettling things that happens in his increasingly unsettling life and he files it away for later perusal and goes on about his business like he always does.

Until maybe two weeks later when he's walking home from the bus stop and Running Shorts is there again. Not running, but there he is slouching in a doorway with his shorts and his mile-long legs and it's December and about 21 degrees, so Hux definitely isn't the weirdo here, no matter how this guy's looking at him.

Hux is seized with the irrational desire to confront him, to shake him by the improbably broad shoulders and demand _what the fuck is wrong with you, what do you want from me, why are you so pissed off,_ but he doesn't, he can't, he just tips a nervous smile in Shorts's direction and sidles on his way. Or tries to, but suddenly he's the one with a hand on his shoulder and a voice (low, rumbly, but amused and, somehow, boyish) muttering in his ear.

“Where the fuck are you going?”

“Don't touch me.” Obvious weirdo, Hux thinks, possible junkie or mugger or rapist or God only knows. “What do you want?” Maybe it's just a dollar or bus fare or something and Hux can get the guy to fuck off with a couple of small bills. He considers going for his wallet, but it might look too much like he's reaching for a gun and he doesn't think it's possible to hide any kind of weapon in shorts that small but Hux would rather not take that chance.

“What do you want?” Hux says again. No answer, just a narrowing of the black eyes, an arrogant toss of the head; black hair, thick, a little too long, loose curls flung in all directions.

“You were looking at me,” the guy says, softer, sounding almost bewildered. While this is true, of course, it's hardly Hux's fault and what the fuck is this idiot doing lolloping around in running shorts that barely begin to cover his ass if he doesn't want anyone to look at him?

“Look, man, I'm just... I don't know. I'm sorry.” Hux holds out his hands in what he hopes is a placating gesture and backs away slowly, as if he's facing down a stray dog he doesn't quite trust not to go for his throat. And the big motherfucker does go for his throat, grabs for it with one huge cold hand and pins Hux against the brick wall behind him so fast that it doesn't occur to him to fight back until he's already trapped and gasping for breath.

“You looking for something? I know what you want.”

“Get the fuck off me.” It comes out a lot more high-pitched and panicked than Hux intended, but he's not panicking, not yet, he's been in worse places than this and more dangerous situations and before he can give any kind of consideration to his actions he jerks one knee up into the guy's all-but-unprotected crotch, making him grunt and lose his grip on Hux's throat but when he starts to crumple he falls the wrong way, pinning Hux between the wall and his giant off-kilter body. Then they slide to the ground, both grappling at each other; they thrash around ineffectually for a while, kicking and biting and pulling hair, and Hux comes out on top, Running Shorts looking up at him with big dazed dark eyes and his (sweet, firm, pink-fleshed, eminently kissable) mouth twisted into something like a smile.

“So,” he says. “You looking for a good time, or what?”

“What?”

“You want to fuck me, don't you?”

“I don't know you.” Hux is, if possible, even more confused at this point, but there's something about the word 'fuck' being lovingly shaped by those plush pink lips that makes his dick show unmistakable interest, and isn't this guy pretty much exactly his type despite the fact that he's clearly out of his fucking mind. Physically, he could've been lifted wholesale from Hux's masturbatory fantasies, tight little shorts and all. Hux has always wanted exactly what he could never be, exactly what he's inexplicably collided with tonight: dark, striking, muscular, beautiful in a sort of moody feline way.

“Do you give a shit? Come on, 50 bucks, I'll blow you.” Hux finds himself agreeing, nodding, tongue-tied. Seems kind of steep for an anonymous alleyway blowjob, but having the endless-legged magnificence of-- all right, Hux kind of wishes he knew the guy's name now- on his knees in the mud and grit and wilted snow there in front of him is nothing short of priceless. They're in an empty corridor between two buildings, clearly visible from the street, and Hux generally isn't the kind of guy who face-fucks hookers in public, but now Running Shorts is springing to his feet again, grabbing Hux's sleeve, dragging him behind a Dumpster, and then he's kneeling with Hux's hands in his hair and his open mouth pressed to the crotch of Hux's trousers.

“I'm not giving you 50 bucks,” Hux says. Running Shorts looks up at him disdainfully, tongue lolling out of his mouth as he continues to work over Hux's crotch.

“How about a hundred?”

“Fuck you.” Running Shorts raises his eyebrows like he's considering that option, doing a weird sort of teeth-drag across the bulge in Hux's pants that isn't like any pre-blowjob technique he's encountered before. Hux wants to unzip himself but doesn't dare place his hands between that mouth and his dick. He shoves both thumbs in his waistband and claws it down over his hips instead, and Running Shorts draws back briefly, dark brows knit together in concentration. His face, Hux notices, is scattered with small moles and freckles, tiny dark spots like stray flecks of ink. They seem ornamental somehow, like someone put them there on purpose.

“I like these,” Hux says. “Your beauty spots.”

“Yeah, thanks.” Shorts is looking down like he still hasn't decided what to do about Hux's boner, like something about Hux's pale scrawny spread-leggedness gives him pause. He narrows his eyes and licks his lips, and Hux shivers. “I'll do you for 40. Take it or leave it.”

“Take it.” Hux isn't sure he has a choice at this point; anyway, he has no intentions of backing out.

“All right.” That eyeroll again, that look of practiced disdain. His big hands are resting on Hux's hips, surprisingly gentle, and he leans in and closes his eyes and takes Hux neatly and comprehensively into his mouth, like practically swallowing the entire length of Hux's dick in a single graceful lunge while Hux clings with trembling hands to the cold brick wall behind him.

“Wait,” Hux says, really wanting him to do no such thing, but he feels what might be a sudden twinge of conscience, a need to slap some sort of veneer of civility onto this interaction. “What's your name?”

“Kylo.” Muttered out of the side of his mouth, but clear enough. Kylo. That's who's sucking his dick right now.

“Pretty name.” Fake name, obviously. His parents probably call him, like, Jimmy or Ben or Matt or something. If they're even still speaking to him.

“Mm.” 'Kylo' is looking up at him now, lips pursed and wet, cheeks visibly flushed, and his eyes; well, holy shit, that's a real smolder he's got going on. What was that line-- Hux remembers, a poem he'd read in high school- _I love long black eyes that caress like silk... you clung to me as a garment clings, my girl._ Romantic. Back-alley-blowjob romantic. Hux draws his fingers through Kylo's hair, which is smooth and damp and cool against his skin.

“Don't tell me your name.” He's backed off Hux's cock now, is using his teeth again, nibbling his way down the crease of Hux's groin to his inner thigh and breathing heavily the whole time like he's really getting off on this. “I don't want to know your name, all right.” This is something Hux has no problem agreeing to.

“Just suck my cock.” Hux tries to guide Kylo's head back into position, but Kylo stiffens and bites down harder and Hux imagines showering later and finding all these little imprints from his teeth starting to darken into bruises, imagines the welcome sting of the hot water. It might as well hurt a little, if he's doing something like this.

Hux is really wondering at this point what the polite thing to do is, as he'd still kind of like that blowjob but he doesn't want to interrupt the artistic process, as it were. He threads his fingers deeper into Kylo's hair under the guise of a caress, actually trying to get a proper grip; he alternates shoving Kylo's head towards his cock with trying to insinuate himself into Kylo's mouth with what are intended to be subtle motions of his hips.

“Stop moving.”

“Stop chewing on my leg,” Hux hisses, a little indignantly. “You said you were going to suck me off.” Kylo rolls his eyes and huffs out a long hot breath that lands directly on Hux's bared and leaking cock, making him yelp and twitch his hips again, involuntarily, not really trying to escape those giant hands keeping him pinned against the wall behind him.

Then Kylo opens his mouth and swallows Hux down again, like his cock is inconsequential, and goddamn does he have a soft warm wet mouth and a well-trained throat, Hux is practically seeing stars already, but beyond those bursts of light is Kylo, still somehow looking disdainful with his head bobbing and his eyes half-closed and his full lips wrapped around Hux's dick.

That's pretty fucking good, Hux thinks, and he's distantly aware of snowflakes settling on his face as he tilts his head back and groans with his fingers still knotted in Kylo's hair but he's pretty sure he's never been warmer in his life.

It's over too soon, Hux coming what feels like all the way down Kylo's esophagus while Kylo rolls his eyes at him again but takes his time withdrawing, easing his mouth off Hux as gently as possible. He licks his lips, turns his head to wipe his mouth on the sleeve of his t-shirt. Hux's hands are trembling as he fumbles a sheaf of bills out of his wallet; he's just had dirty alleyway sex with a hooker, he can't help thinking. Possibly the surliest hooker in the history of the profession. Kylo accepts his fee without a word. He spits on the ground, wipes his mouth again, turns to leave. There's snow caught in his hair, snow collecting in the stretched-loose collar of his shirt.

“Don't try to find me again,” he says. “You won't be able to. Don't ask around for me or anything.”

“Yeah.” Hux clears his throat. “That's fine.” Kylo nods, apparently satisfied he understands. He strolls out of the shadow of the Dumpster, pauses momentarily by the street lamp on the corner, then slinks off into the flurrying snow. And that's the last Hux sees of him for three and a half months.


	2. Chapter 2

The sidewalk snowbanks collect dirt, get smaller and crustier every day and finally give way to mud. Buds on the trees, birds nesting and singing, longer days and shorter skirts and Hux keeps an eye out every day for a familiar pair of running shorts. Just in case. Not that he ever expects to see the guy again.

He does. There's no mistaking that weird uniform, the loose t-shirt and tight shorts and incongruous wingtip shoes, Hux would know him anywhere and wouldn't even need to see him skulking at the mouth of the alley where they'd had their last encounter, but that's where he turns up. Lowering sun, clouds, a damp chill in the air and dogwood blossoms blowing like the snowflakes did before, white petals, driftingly unreal.

“Hey.” Hux keeps his voice low, his tone casual, doesn't step into Kylo's space, just hails him from a safe distance while glancing around to make sure no one's watching him do so. The coast apparently clear, he steps closer, half expecting Kylo to lash out and pin him by the throat again and fully expecting to weirdly enjoy it if he does.

“You want it again?”

“You remember me?” Hux tries not to sound delighted, after all this guy seems to be staking him out (if not actually stalking him; but two sightings in four months wouldn't count as stalking, would they) but hasn't Hux thought about him practically every day since the night of the blowjob, unable to suppress the memory of those haughty dark eyes looking up at him, Kylo hating his guts and sucking his dick at the same time.

“Will you come with me? Upstairs?” Hux says it while Kylo still seems to be thinking of an appropriately dismissive answer to his first question, and he expects to regret it, but he doesn't.

“You live here?”

“Couple blocks down. Come on.” Hux leads the way, is all too aware of Kylo hulking behind him as he crosses the lobby of his building- he skips the elevator, too much can go wrong in an elevator-- and cuts through the service hallway to the back stairs. Hux is nervous, skin prickling all over with anticipation and his hands are shaking so much he can hardly fumble his key into the lock but eventually he manages to open the door to his own apartment. He stumbles as he crosses the threshold and Kylo ducks inside like he's slightly too tall for the doorway, which is a distinct possibility. They stand in Hux's floral-tiled kitchenette staring each other down like two gunslingers from the Old West until finally Hux comes up with the brilliant idea of offering his guest a drink.

“You, uh. Want a beer maybe? Something else?” He opens the freezer. “Vodka... I've got some wine somewhere.” After some rather stilted and blundering negotiation, they end up on Hux's couch with matching bottles of microbrew, some kind of IPA, the sort of thing Hux feels like he should enjoy at his age. He has no idea how old his new friend is, of course. Younger. Probably. His face and body language have that openness to them, the unselfconscious expressiveness of youth.

“How old are you anyway?” No way to work up to a question like that, so he just blurts it out. Well, he hasn't scared this guy off so far.

“Legal.”

“What?”

“I'm not a fucking teenage runaway, so don't worry about it.”

“So you're, what, a twenty-something runaway?”

“I said don't worry about it.” Kylo takes a long pull from his beer, belches loudly, wipes his mouth on the back of his hand. “Want to know how much I charge for a fuck?”

“How much?” Hux is determined to play along, for some reason. Maybe because he wants to find out if Kylo actually is as much of a joyless dick as he pretends to be. Maybe because that blowjob a couple months ago is pretty high on the short list of contenders for Highlight of His Life So Far.

“Why? You think you can afford it?” Kylo actually grins after delivering this line, briefly but genuinely, the expression lighting up his face in a way that almost causes Hux physical pain to witness because fuck, Kylo is just that sweetly and effortlessly gorgeous. He's pretty sure wars have been fought over faces like that.

“I figured we could negotiate, probably. Work something out. It's better than sucking dick on the street, right? I'd let you sleep in my bed and everything.” Hux is being at least sixty percent sarcastic, but he can tell he's gotten Kylo's hackles up again.

“I don't need you to keep me. I'm not your personal whore.”

“No one said you were a whore.”

“Forget it. You wanna fuck me?” Hux does, he really does, but he'd somehow pictured this progressing differently. Slower, with more candor and camaraderie, maybe something in the way of seduction. His hands are at his sides, Kylo's brawny white thigh only inches from his fingertips, but he can't quite bring himself to close the distance.

“Get undressed,” Hux says, or rather hears himself say, feels his lips moving around the words but doesn't remember how he arrived at those two in particular. He takes a sip of his beer and does his best to feign patience, and Kylo lifts one eyebrow and nods intently. He runs a hand through his hair, shrugs a couple times as if screwing up his courage, then sways to his feet to stand in front of Hux with his legs spread and his hands on his hips, his back military-straight and his great thighs tensed and quivering slightly. He strips off his shirt without ceremony, then crouches to unlace his shoes. Hux is already breathless at this point, admiring Kylo's powerful shoulders and the generous swell of his biceps and pectorals, none of which were all too well hidden by the t-shirt but it's still a fucking revelation to see that stately framework of bone and muscle clothed in nothing but skin.

Then the shorts come off, which Hux had thought he was prepared for, but Kylo isn't wearing anything underneath and his ass is a thing of beauty and a joy forever, a gorgeously trim and leanly muscled treasure, the kind of ass that's a legitimate argument for the existence of a loving god who knew exactly what he was doing when he made man in his own image.

“Nice,” Hux says, so far under his breath that he doesn't really expect Kylo to hear him, but in any case Kylo's obviously pretty proud of himself. Nude, he stretches his arms over his head, bends to one side and then the other, displays his body for Hux; all while despising him for enjoying the show, if the look on his face is any indication. Not that being glowered at has any appreciable effect on Hux's boner at this point.

“I want you to suck my dick again,” Hux announces. “Maybe pretend to like it this time.”

It occurs to Hux that there's really quite a disconnect between the way Kylo sucks cock and the way he appears to feel about sucking cock. Though he never relaxes or closes his eyes or even stops scowling, his mouth is gentle and his technique is beyond reproach. Hux, admittedly, doesn't have much for him to contend with, and Kylo is more than capable of taking him in. Hux, with a fresh beer in one hand and the back of Kylo's dutifully bobbing head in the other, figures he's about as contented as it's possible for him to be. He also figures, since he's paying Kylo for his time, it's not inconsiderate to let his mind wander.

He thinks of his most recent ex-girlfriend, a hard-edged blonde of Amazonian proportions who touched him almost as indifferently as Kylo does, but demanded far less introspection from him. She'd been pretty enough, but not in a conventional way; Hux reflects that he's never really gone for the ones that could be said to have universal appeal. 

"You have a girlfriend?" Kylo says, abruptly, as if he's read Hux's mind. 

"Had one." Hux prods Kylo's ribs with one bare foot. "Didn't tell you to stop, did I?" 

"So you fuck girls." 

"As a general rule, yes." Apparently satisfied with this, Kylo returns his attention to Hux's cock. He gets more inventive, drawing back and closing his lips tightly around the head before lunging forward again to take the entire length down his throat.

“You ever fuck a guy in the ass before?” Kylo draws back, licking his marvelously plush lips, looking at Hux with those big watery brown eyes like he's fucking Bambi or something, like he's far too much of a darling innocent woodland creature for that sentence or Hux's dick to have just come out of his mouth. Hux is at this point getting a little fed up with his short attention span, and the truth is that no, he's never actually fucked anyone in the ass before but now doesn't seem like a great time to admit that. What's weird is that Kylo is actually smiling, kind of sardonically and more with one side of his mouth than the other, but it gives Hux this rushing sensation in his chest that makes him feel like his heart is melting and he can't stand having so many clothes on all of a sudden.

He lurches to his feet, kicking his way out of his crumpled trousers. Tries to ignore Kylo's eyes on him as he unbuttons his shirt; Hux knows he isn't anything much to look at when he's naked, kind of white and stringy and insipid like supermarket rotisserie chicken, really just an unornamented collection of flimsy muscles and protruding joints and little pockets of fat here and there. No definition to his chest and belly, an ass that's somewhere between flat and nonexistent depending on how much he's been sitting on it lately. Kylo, however, is still kind of smiling as he watches Hux struggle to pry his shirt off his elbows. Kylo is giving him that Bambi look again, deer-in-headlights stunned with his eyes wide and shining and his soft mouth hanging open. Kylo's running a hand down his own belly, fingering the ridges of muscle there, carding his fingers lingeringly through his dark pubic hair before taking hold of his cock.

“What?” Hux says. It's really been a while since he's had sex with anyone and he doesn't remember if this amount of staring is usually necessary.

“Nothing. C'mere.” Kylo reaches for Hux, grasps him by the hip with his free hand. They sort of fall against each other, Hux practically swooning onto Kylo's broad chest, and he feels Kylo's other hand sneaking behind him to pinch his ass and Kylo's cock half-hard and swelling against his stomach.

“Do you want me to?” Hux is muttering into Kylo's neck, both hands on his shoulders, Kylo's warmth and closeness overwhelming; the smell of his skin, the rhythm of his breath, the weight of his hands on Hux's hips. “Do you like it? Being fucked?” Instead of answering, Kylo kisses him, and it's firm and hot and hard and sloppy-wet and Hux is almost impossibly turned on.

“Could fuck you if you want.”

“Do you like that?”

“I don't give a shit.”

“Come on.” Hux is swiftly losing the thread of the conversation, feels somewhat as though the time for negotiation is past. “Let's go to bed, then.” He turns and stumbles towards the door, and Kylo follows him.


	3. Chapter 3

Hux's bedroom is a bit of a wreck, laundry piled everywhere, shoes jumbled together in front of the closet door, ironing board half-unfolded in the corner because he'd meant to put it away and just hadn't gotten around to it. Kylo glances around, shrugs, throws himself down on Hux's bed and proceeds to get comfortable as if he'd been sleeping in those plaid flannel sheets every night for years, as if he and Hux have established a routine by now. Hux slips in beside him and is taken by surprise when Kylo immediately throws a leg over him and starts to rub his crotch against Hux's, at the same time lowering his head to nip at Hux's shoulder in that weird way he has that's more like some kind of animal grooming behavior than foreplay.

“I want to fuck you,” Hux says, and he doesn't know if that's really what he wants but it rings true enough, and he thinks of Kylo's mouth on his dick and tries to imagine what it'll be like to fuck him in the ass, maybe just like this with Kylo looming over him and rolling his hips against him and chewing obsessively on every inch of Hux's skin that he can reach.

“Put your fingers in first.” Kylo grabs one of Hux's hands and sucks briefly and fiercely on the first two fingers before guiding them between his legs, and beneath his balls, and then Kylo's actually fucking himself with Hux's fingers like he's using a dildo, grunting and tensing his thighs and Hux at this point is harder than he would've thought was physically possible and he can't stop looking at Kylo's dick which maybe isn't the biggest he's ever seen in his life but easily in the top three and very nicely shaped, long and slender and arcing downward away from his body. Uncircumcised, Hux can't help but notice, which is somehow endearing. Hux reaches out to touch Kylo, strokes him from chest to belly to thigh, takes hold of his cock while his other hand is two knuckles deep in Kylo's ass and he really does seem like he's loving this.

“I'll let you do it,” he says, still undulating somehow gracefully, rising up and then falling back against Hux's fingers. “Do it hard, fuck me deep, come inside me, fuck, lemme take your come...” His eyes are closed, he's positioning himself entirely by touch, and he takes Hux's cock and guides it into his body and that's it, Kylo's riding him and Hux really has to be the fucking luckiest man on earth. All that strength, all that beauty, the grace and precision of Kylo's movements as he sways up and down on Hux's cock and no wonder his thighs are so ridiculously strong. Hux never wants this to stop, wants to say something to that effect but can't get any words to come out, nothing recognizable anyway, just a lot of strangled gurgling like he's just had his throat slit and he hasn't been this far gone in he doesn't know how long.

Hux comes- comes hard, of course he does, he'd never understood the meaning of the expression “seeing stars” quite so well-- and Kylo doesn't but he bats away all Hux's offers of assistance and settles down ponderously to sleep, pulling Hux to his side and offering him an unexpectedly saucy goodnight kiss, that same vehement and artless thrust of Kylo's tongue between his lips.

After that idyllic beginning, Hux ends up moving to the couch because as it turns out Kylo is never still or silent enough to enable anyone sharing a bed with him to get any rest whatsoever. He grunts, moans, mumbles, tosses, turns, twitches and kicks- surprisingly violently-- in his sleep. Hux is no stranger to sleeping on couches, is happy enough to leave Kylo sprawled diagonally across his bed having some kind of improbably spirited unconscious discussion with himself. He has of course kicked all the covers off at this point and Hux turns back for one last look at his incandescent long-legged nudity in the pale light filtering in from the hallway. Hux sleeps well and wakes rested to find his bed empty, but the sheets are still rumpled and warm and smelling of-- well, Hux doesn't really know how to describe it except as a warm seldom-washed animal smell, like when you bury your nose in a dog's fur.

That's when he remembers that they never really discussed the matter of Kylo's payment, and Hux notices that his wallet is now on the bedside table when he's pretty sure it had been in his pants pocket the night before. He picks it up and yeah, Kylo's definitely been flipping through it because all the credit and business and insurance cards and Hux's driver's license and social security and checkbook and everything's been rearranged but all Kylo seems to have taken is a couple of twenties and, for some reason, Hux's half-stamped Bagel Depot loyalty card. Hux is a bit uneasy about this because he probably owes Kylo money; extrapolating from the rate of forty bucks for a quick alleyway blowjob, an actual fuck with full nudity and kissing and everything should run him at least a hundred. Or maybe not, because what if Kylo makes no distinction between the two? What if Hux never finds out because they never see each other again?

He manages not to worry about it for the rest of the day; he naps, watches TV, finishes ironing his shirts, immerses himself in the reassuring minutiae of his solitary life to the point where it almost seems like none of this ever happened. Like Kylo is just something he made up. Interesting story, right? Meets a guy on his way home from work one day, guy attempts to beat him up and then offers to suck his dick. Implausible, but it's not like he has anyone to report it to. He does catch himself thinking more than once about that 'teenage runaway' line, because there's no way Kylo could be an actual teenager, right, that's impossible, can you imagine how shitty Hux would feel about this whole thing if he turned out to really be some high school dropout turning tricks on the street, but that To Catch A Predator type shit doesn't happen in real life and especially not to people like Hux who are contributing members of society and always obey parking regulations and file their taxes on time.

That night Hux drinks the last of his beer and finds himself thinking about Kylo again, because even though he turned out to be impossible to sleep with it was still nice to have someone in his bed for a while. He keeps thinking about Kylo's dark hair on the pillow, Kylo's face in profile, not looking especially pleased or sated or anything with his eyes pressed shut and mouth twisted with incomprehensible muttering but here Hux is wishing he could get ahold of Kylo somehow, nothing conventional like texting but maybe a carrier pigeon would work or an anonymous note or a signal or some kind of message in a secret code. Something about this is bringing out Hux's long-dormant romantic side. Maybe the fact that it's technically illegal; it lends the whole situation kind of a star-crossed picturesqueness. Romeo and Juliet, the balcony at sunrise.

Hux jerks off- it's unavoidable at this point-- thinking about Kylo, his smile, his lips, his eyes all wide and dark and trusting in those unguarded moments of sudden and disarming honesty, those moments when Hux could maybe see who he really is, who he's spent all this time pretending not to be. A sweet kid. Funny. Likeable. A kid who probably has better things to do than sleep with Hux, who could actually be doing pretty much anything else on a Saturday night in spring, but what the hell. Hux takes what he can get. Story of his life, really.

He thinks about Kylo the next day, at work and at home, and again the day after that. Thinks about fucking him, the sweet raw roughness of it, Kylo's body with its long bones and thick firm muscles and how perfect he is compared to Hux, how they're so different that it's almost hard to believe they belong to the same species. It becomes increasingly hard to believe that Kylo exists, let alone that he was in Hux's bed. Part of Hux regrets washing those sheets, wants to keep waking up to that unfamiliar and somewhat fusty smell and remembering how it felt to have Kylo pinned under him and panting and his muscles all traced out with gleaming trails of sweat.

Time continues to pass and by the time Hux catches another glimpse of Kylo he's more or less become just another well-worn jerkoff fantasy. He isn't wearing shorts this time, even though it's August and they'd be more or less a conventional wardrobe choice at this point. He's on the same street, Hux's street, near the bus stop, and he's not alone. He's actually with a man, which makes Hux immediately and bloodcurdlingly jealous, but this guy doesn't seem like much competition, even for Hux. He's stooped and scrawny and scratchy-voiced and ancient and Hux can't see his face but judging by the yellowish kinked vulture claws of his hands this fucking dude has to be older than God himself. And Kylo's arguing with him, and Vulture Claws is arguing back and Hux can only make out about half the conversation from where he's standing and he dithers around trying to figure out if he dares to try and get closer and settles on leaning against the wall of the building pretending to be utterly absorbed by something fascinating on his phone.

“I'm sorry if you're disappointed,” the vulture is saying. “There's nothing either of us can do to alter the circumstances now. You're mature enough, aren't you? You can deal with things being the way they have to be.”

“What am I supposed to do? Just not think about you? Pretend I don't give a shit?”

“Is that such a tall order, now?” The vulture goes in for a kiss- weirdly enough, on Kylo's cheek, which he has to stand on tiptoe to reach-- but Kylo rebuffs him. “You're young and smart and pretty. You'll have plenty of fun without me.”

Hux realizes he has two options here: retreat, continue to be mystified, pretend he never saw what he saw. Or he could confront Kylo, now standing alone by the streetlamp under a growing cloud of moths, scowling generally into the night. Hux chooses confrontation, which is almost certainly what Kylo had in mind, staging this argument where he knew Hux would be likely to overhear it. Or Kylo's forgotten about him entirely, and Hux is reading too much into these chance encounters. Or the performance is for someone else; who knows, maybe Kylo's fucked every mildly attractive mid-thirties schlub on this street.

Hux steps deliberately into the circle of light under the streetlamp, and Kylo looks at him with startled recognition, almost guilty, as if Hux is the scorned husband who's just caught him cheating. Neither of them say anything for a few uncomfortable seconds. Then Kylo turns and darts back into the alley-- same alley, same dumpster, same grease-and-garbage stench- glancing over his shoulder and motioning for Hux to follow him.

“Who was he?” Hux can't resist asking as he leans against the wall, Kylo's hands on his hips, Kylo's head bowed in front of him. Hux doesn't touch himself, doesn't even make a move to unzip his fly. Trying not to seem too eager, but the way he can't keep his hands off Kylo's face probably gives him away. Smoothing his hair back, stroking his throat and jaw, pressing his fingers between Kylo's lips and letting him suck and nibble and from the way his mouth's working it seems like he's missed Hux too.

“Who?” Straight-faced, playing dumb, Hux's fingers still in his mouth. “Nobody you know.”

“Your boyfriend or something?”

“Shut up.” Kylo backs off, looking over his shoulder, first to one side and then the other as if he's afraid he's being followed. He pulls Hux deeper into the shadow of the dumpster. It's begun to rain, stingingly hard drops driven sideways by a cold and sudden wind, and the slight overhang of the building's roof provides little protection.

“I want you to fuck me,” Kylo says; and, over Hux's protests, “no, I can't go home with you. Do it here. Come on, let's just do it quick.” Hux is both taken aback and turned on, and though he's not exactly a stranger to alfresco shagging he doesn't think it's a great idea to do it in a dirty alleyway in the driving rain in the goddamn middle of the night. Something about being in close proximity to Kylo overrides his instincts, however, and he's out of his pants before he's even had time to be self-conscious. Kylo leans against him awkwardly, jeans around his knees, and Hux gets inside him with barely anything to ease the friction. Rainwater and spit, but Kylo isn't deterred in the slightest. His body shields Hux, both from the rain and from the line of sight of anyone who happens to walk by.

“Tell me who he was. That guy.”

“Forget it.” Kylo's teeth are gritted, as usual, and he has both hands on Hux's ass, using the leverage to maneuver him, again as if Hux is just some inanimate object he's decided to fuck himself with.

“He's not your fucking dad or something, is he?” Hux laughs; he doesn't really mean to, and nothing about this strikes him as funny, but he does, and in return Kylo just looks at him like he's imagining Hux chopped up in several pieces in a garbage bag at the bottom of a lake.

“Fuck off,” he mutters, shoving one broad palm over Hux's mouth, sweatily and effectively gagging him. Hux tries to bite, but all he can manage are brief harmless scrapes of his teeth against Kylo's skin. He makes an undignified little chirping noise as he comes, Kylo's hand still clamped over approximately half of his face.

Kylo withdraws, wordlessly, pulling up his pants, and Hux catches a glimpse of his half-hard cock straining over the waistband of his undershorts and looking distinctly as though it could use some attention and before he's given it any thought whatsoever he's on his knees in front of Kylo holding onto his hips-- man hips, hard and narrow, not an ounce of fat to spare anywhere on Kylo's body- and taking Kylo's cock into his mouth. Like it's some kind of offering, a solemn ritual, you scratch my back I'll scratch yours; really all Hux was thinking is that Kylo's cock looks delicious and he has to put his lips on it.

Kylo grunts, in surprise or pleasure or pain, Hux is a little out of practice and his technique is sloppy and involves more teeth than is probably advisable. Kylo swats him on the head a couple times and he gets the hang of it, adjusts his rhythm, lets Kylo hold his hair and guide his head as he takes that lengthy cock deeper into his throat than he would've thought possible. Hux gags a little, he can't help it, then he backs off and just uses his lips on the head of Kylo's cock like he's sucking on a lollipop which Kylo doesn't seem to mind. Then he's pulled forward again, trying to get his throat to relax but it's really been too long since the last time he tried this and he has to bow out when he starts feeling like he's going to throw up.

“You're kind of shitty at that, aren't you?”

“Sorry.”

“It's all right.” Kylo treats him to another rare smile, beaming and crooked and entirely genuine, and gives Hux a weirdly condescending pat on the head. “Shit, ok, I really have to go now.” And just like that he stuffs himself back into his jeans and leaves, leaves Hux still crouching in an alleyway with the taste of a stranger's cock in his mouth which is the kind of thing he'd thought he'd be well past at his age. He feels unaccountably devastated, like he's just been abandoned by someone who'd actually loved him, and he's honestly starting to wonder if he's been single too long because who the hell is Kylo to have this kind of effect on him?

Hux doesn't sleep well that night, has apparently sunk so low at this point that a hooker's opinion of his dick-sucking skills is causing him to lose sleep. It's not just that, though, but the knowledge that Kylo's slept in his bed, the all-too-vivid memory of him sprawled naked in Hux's sheets, and it doesn't seem right that Hux will never have that again. Days pass, weeks, and no matter what Hux eats or drinks and no matter how many times he brushes his teeth and no matter how many cigarettes he smokes (he's quitting, obviously, he was down to a handful a day but since Kylo he's back up again) he can't stop tasting Kylo in his mouth.


	4. Chapter 4

Hux eventually comes to the conclusion that it's better to stop thinking of Kylo as a person, to remember him, if he has to remember him, as some kind of surly muscular projection of his own repressed sexual longings. Then, one random Tuesday, he's reading a newspaper on his lunch break when suddenly there's Kylo's face in blurred black and white wearing an unfamiliar blank expression. Posed and stiff, like a yearbook photo, tensed unsmiling mouth, something a bit stunned about the eyes. His hair is a lot shorter, Hux notes, fails to cover his jug-handle ears. Local man missing, the headline reads. And continues to read, no matter how many times Hux slides his eyes back and forth over it from one uncompromising syllable to the next. The actual item is brief, almost worse than having no information at all, but it does contain Kylo's real name and age: Ben Solo, 29. Neighbors alerted the authorities after smelling something rotting behind the locked apartment door. Car found in Rite Aid parking lot. No sign of a struggle.

Hux keeps the folded newspaper with him like a talisman, pulls it out every 20 minutes or so to reread the sparse paragraph of text and study Kylo's- Ben's-- picture. Kylo, Ben; whoever he is, if the cops can't find him, what hope does Hux have? Another long-lost boy, buried under a warehouse loading dock or tied up in a sack of bricks at the bottom of the river. What about the old guy, the vulture, the guy that Hux had seen with Kylo that night when...

It's entirely possible, Hux thinks, that the old guy- whoever he is-- has something to do with this, that Hux's suspicions have nothing to do with his jealousy. Hux remains in an agony of indecision as he walks home from the bus stop that afternoon; what are the odds that no one knows about Kylo's gentleman companion, that he hasn't been questioned or apprehended? Hux doesn't sleep well that night, can't stop seeing Kylo's face, his dull stare in that grainy newspaper photograph. And the man with the nicotine-stained vulture-claw fingers, Hux keeps seeing him, undressing Kylo, feeling him up, fucking him. Kylo kissing him, tonguing that withered mouth, those thin husk-dry lips where Hux's lips have been. When he finally sleeps he dreams of Kylo, not really Kylo but his corpse, an empty body stretched naked on Hux's bed. Blank as a mannequin, lolling head, glass eyes. Hux wakes exhausted, discovers his alarm's failed to go off and he's late for work again.

Hux keeps combing the papers. Weeks go by, months, the snow falls again, shelters the city in a forgiving layer of anonymity. No word of Kylo, no body found, no resolution. Hux is almost ready to give him up for lost, quit mourning for him and carry on with his life and maybe someday find someone else to fuck, when he runs into Vulture Claws again.

It's a marvelous stroke of luck, an unbelievable coincidence. It has to be. Hux is at a bar, just an unspectacular small-town bar with poor service but a decent selection of beers on tap, and at some point still fairly early in the evening, feeling sharp and sentimental after a couple of drinks, he looks up and there's fucking Vulture Claws over by the door, and there's a girl with him. Pretty and petite and freckled, a standoffish-looking little wild thing, tight black dress and hazardous-looking heels and a hell of a lot of makeup. Her hair is all done up in an elaborate series of knots, and she has a very familiar murderous glint in her eyes; like Kylo when Hux first met him. Like everything she sees disgusts her, especially Hux, who by now has caught her eye. She approaches him, and he pretends to be absorbed in studying the suds at the bottom of his beer glass, hunched over on the bar like your average unremarkable sorry drunk.

“Hi there.” Her voice is ridiculous, the low stagy purr of a woman trying to sound a lot older than she is. It's like she's auditioning for a phone sex line, and Hux almost wants to laugh, but then she puts a hand on his arm and he tries not to recoil too obviously in case the vulture is watching him. In case anyone's watching who might think he's the one doing to this girl whatever illegal things are being done to her. It's safe to assume the vulture is a pimp, of the type who'd probably have no qualms about kicking the shit out of Kylo and leaving him to bleed out in an alley somewhere for a couple of bills from Hux's wallet.

“I'm not interested.” Hux is sliding his empty glass down the bar, eyeing the exit, getting ready to sprint if he has to. He's looking around like he still thinks he might spot Kylo somewhere, hanging back in the shadows or hitting on someone at the other end of the bar or coming out of the men's room wiping his mouth on his shirt and looking unsurprised to see Hux standing here, unnerved and tipsy and confused with this tiny hooker's hand on his arm.

“I just thought maybe you could buy me a drink.”

“Look.” Hux is making an effort to be inconspicuous, keeping his voice low, although that necessitates leaning towards the girl in what she's probably reading as an encouraging manner. “I don't know what you're involved in, but I'm pretty sure it's illegal and I don't want anything to do with it. You might not know about this, but he's dangerous and you should get out as soon as you can.” Hux doesn't want to mention anything about Kylo's disappearance, is trying like hell not to incriminate himself but he can't just sit here and get hit on by the vulture's new protege while Kylo's-- god knows- wrapped in a tarp in a Dumpster on the edge of an abandoned construction site.

“Nothing illegal. You just look like you could use some company.” The girl sits down on the bar stool next to Hux's, crossing her arms over her pert little chest; physically, she's a far cry from Kylo, not intimidating in the slightest, but Hux gets the same whiff of wildness from her. Like she's lost too much to continue giving a shit what anyone thinks of her, especially people like Hux.

“As long as he doesn't know about it,” Hux says, gesturing as discreetly as humanly possible towards the vulture, who's still lurking by the door. Talking to a group of guys by the jukebox, and when he gestures with those withered hands Hux can see that they're covered with heavy rings, silver, gold, the glint of huge stones, the colors of topaz and emerald and citrine and ruby visible from clear across the room. “I want to talk to you, but don't tell him anything.” Stupid, he thinks, as he flags down the bartender and orders, at the girl's insistence, two fifty-cent shots of well vodka. Stupid Hux, you stupid asshole, what are you fucking with now?

“Let's talk,” she says, raising her shot glass in a toast and flashing Hux an incongruously sunny smile. Pretty, really, this girl, not as unusual as Kylo but kind of a standout with her square jaw and sweet little snub nose and light scattering of freckles. Girl-next-door under all that makeup, tough but tempting, the kind of girl Hux could be persuaded to go home with. “What do you want to know?”

“What's your name?” Hux toys with the icy shot glass, smearing his fingers through the condensation on the outside, still keeping a weather eye on Vulture Claws and his retinue of admirers, and where did these guys all come from, is VC running some kind of Alfred Tayloresque rentboy salon with bonus kidnapping and snuff film production on the side, and if only it wouldn't be actually suicidal to confront the old fucker himself--

“Yoohoo.” The girl's still smiling at him, waving a hand in front of his face. “I'm Rey. I don't have anywhere to go tonight. Can I come over to your place?” She downs her shot, and Hux downs his, and after a couple more his brain is numb enough and his lips are loose enough and he takes her up on the offer, but he can't shake the creeping paranoia and all the way back to his apartment he's craning his neck around watching for the looming figure of Vulture Claws in every doorway and alley and side street he passes while Rey trips along beside him, unconcerned, a kind of innocent gaiety in her awkward platform-heeled stride that reminds Hux of a foal that's barely learned to walk.

He breathes an unwarranted sigh of relief when he finally gets Rey up to his bedroom, and she promptly kicks off her shoes and peels out of her dress and as it turns out she's wearing no bra and a very ordinary and not overtly sexy pair of light blue cotton panties, the kind that come in packs of four and five at Walmart, and for some reason this is incredibly endearing. Hux is still confused and worried and drunk, and Rey proceeds to open his freezer and drink him out of house and vodka and at some point she starts mixing it with the flat Diet Coke in his fridge and Hux is drinking it too and they're on his couch getting familiar with each other, her arms lazily around him and her head on his shoulder and her dainty little freckled tits within easy reach of his hands.

“So you're a hooker,” he says, without preamble, distantly aware of a familiar tightness in his trousers, wondering why he's doing this and expecting Vulture Claws or the police to start hammering on his door at any moment. He touches Rey's face, and she blinks at him, shedding makeup, mascara streaking her cheeks like black tar.

“Obviously.”

“And that guy at the bar.” Hux has a point to make but he can't remember what it is. Something about that wrinkled old vulturey bastard being not only an asshole but probably an actual murderer. He feels something crinkle underneath him and hastily fishes out a much-folded newspaper clipping from the gap between the couch cushions. Rey snatches it from his hands and smoothes it out and the look on her face says that either she or Hux or possibly both of them have fucked up big time.

“You know him? Ben Solo, I guess that's his real name but he called himself Kylo.”

“I have to go.” Rey climbs off the couch and starts hunting for her dress. “I can't-- I really have to go. Sorry. Bye.”

“Wait.”

“What?” She turns around, still topless and disheveled with her loose hair long on her shoulders, the oily synthetic fabric of her dress dripping from one hand, and maybe it's fear or vodka or the fierceness of his longing for Kylo which is somehow still happening no matter how many stern words Hux exchanges with his stupid fucking libido, but nobody has ever looked as absolutely descending-on-a-ray-of-sunlight angelic as Rey does in this moment.

“Stay with me. Not the whole night, I mean, you can go, after--”

“You want me to blow you?” She smirks, and Hux is reminded forcefully and unavoidably of Kylo. She kneels in front of him, and Hux takes her small pale breasts in his hands and kneads them as Rey's smeary-lipsticked mouth descends over his cock. He finds himself wondering how that shade of red would look on Kylo; too harsh, probably, too orange, too much unflattering contrast with his naturally bluish complexion.

After what seems like several sweaty hours, Hux comes in Rey's mouth, his hands gone boneless and clammy on her tits, and she peels him off of her gently and zips back into her dress and leaves carrying her shoes, and even if he had been listening he wouldn't have heard her footsteps on the stairs.


	5. Chapter 5

Hux wakes the next morning feeling like he's been through a nuclear war, sweaty and exhausted and so hung over he's seeing spots and thank fucking god it's Saturday and he doesn't have to drag his demolished carcass into work. He'd apparently slept on the couch after Rey left, and he cringes at the memory of her kneeling in front of him, the desperation with which he'd clung to her poor tits, he wouldn't be surprised if he'd left bruises but she's probably used to that kind of thing. Getting carelessly mouthfucked by sloppy drunks. Once again his wallet's been left out, but this time all that's missing is the newspaper clipping with Kylo's picture and those 200 or so mentally-underlined words that are all Hux has to go on, and he's not about to turn detective and try to singlehandedly solve a probable murder, but he's got his hunches about Vulture Claws and could probably find him again.

And what kind of vigilante bullshit is that, Hux thinks as he puts the kettle on the stove, holding on to the oven door with one hand so he doesn't fall on his ass. What does he think he could do to this guy, hold him at knifepoint and force to him to confess to the murder of a hooker that none of the actual authorities know was a hooker? All Kylo's love's labours are lost, no record of his clients, cash paid under the table, no paper trail whatsoever. Still, it seems insupportably callous to do nothing. If there's a chance that he might see Kylo again, might share a bed with him again, might once again be the focal point of Kylo's contextless rage, well. There must be something he can do.

Today though all he feels up to is loafing on the couch drinking endless cups of tea, wrapped in all the blankets from his bed while he watches true-crime and cold-case stories on TV, trying to piece together the evidence during commercial breaks. Sometime around noon his phone rings and he ignores it because it must be work and it must be his boss reiterating something that Hux has been informed of at least twice via email, but then it rings again and doesn't stop for about half an hour and when he checks it he finds an unfamiliar number and a voice mail that sounds like Rey, although the speaker doesn't identify herself.

“He's not coming back,” is all she says. “I know. You should forget about him.” There's a bunch of garbled background noise, indistinct voices muttering and something creaking rhythmically, and Rey catches her breath and seems about to say something else before the message cuts off. Hux replays it obsessively for the rest of the afternoon, but doesn't dare return a call to the number. “He's not coming back.” The message doesn't change, but repeated listenings reveal that one of the voices definitely belongs to Vulture Claws. Wherever she is now, he's with her.

Sunday passes pretty much the same as Saturday, Hux hunkering down and trying to make some progress on forgetting Kylo. Or Ben, really, is it better to think of him by his actual name? It's better not to think of him at all, obviously, but Hux does anyway, and he half-sleeps all night and then his alarm's going off on Monday morning and he gets this dull chilled feeling that if he kicks Kylo out of his head there's going to be nothing and nobody left. Just work, and the bus, and dirty sidewalks in December, and his apartment full of all the things he's armored himself with to keep from being lonely.

And he is lonely, unremarkably lonely, for the next six months or so. One early morning in July- it's probably around five, the sky is black, the garbage trucks haven't even gone by yet-- he's awakened by something tapping at his bedroom window. Something much too big to be a pigeon, and Hux is pretty sure he's fucking hallucinating when he sees-- dimly lit, vague, eyes like tar pits- Kylo himself standing out there on the fire escape. Hux unlatches the window and wrenches it open without thinking about it, because at this point he's probably dreaming, but Kylo gets his pant leg caught on the windowsill and falls pretty solidly onto Hux's bedroom floor.

“What the fuck,” is all Hux can say, at first. “Why-- where were you? It was in the paper, you disappeared, what the fuck happened?”

“That gray Volvo out back.” Kylo sounds slightly out of breath, which has a pornographic effect, like he has a habit of masturbating to vintage Swedish cars. “That's your car, right?”

“Well, yeah, but--”

“It's a piece of shit, I know.”

“I wasn't going to say that.”

“So does it run?

“Look, can we just--”

“You're helping me get out of here, right?” There's a lot of I'll explain later implied by Kylo's voice and look, and he's desperate. Desperate enough to turn out every drawer in the apartment until he finds the Volvo's keys, desperate enough to cross state lines without paying a single toll; or, shit, maybe he's going international, heading up into the wilds of Canada to disappear a lot more completely than he did last time. And Hux is going to help him; Hux had already known that from the second he was startled out of sleep.

“I don't really know you.” Hux is, of course, still capable of stalling. “Why did you disappear? You have family. Your mother and father, they're looking for you. Thinking their kid is probably dead by now.”

“He is dead. The one who's their kid.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means shut the fuck up and get me the keys.”

“How long is this going to take?” Kylo blanches at that, puts on this facial expression like Hux has just betrayed everything he's ever stood for, like he's stomped all over whatever sacredness is still left in Kylo's life.

“How about the rest of your fucking life?” he says, after a while, still scowling at Hux but smiling a little at the same time, a sort of manic upward twitching of the corners of his mouth. “How does that sound?” He's started going through the drawers under the kitchen counter, in one of which, neatly folded in a plastic baggie, is the key to the Volvo sedan dangling from a hokey plastic keychain shaped like a tiny spaceship. Kylo fishes it out and holds it up triumphantly, and this is about when Hux remembers that Kylo actually had his own transportation; that red Subaru Impreza abandoned in the drugstore parking lot. Whatever happened to that?

“What about your car?”

“What?” Kylo's making his way down the hall to the bedroom, moving prowlingly, like a catburglar. Or a cat. Or a strangely graceful, goofily long-limbed dude who isn't actually that much taller than Hux but seems to have mastered the art of towering over people.

“I mean, you have a car, don't you?” Hux follows Kylo into the bedroom, watches him hunt vaguely around, find Hux's disused gym duffel bag and start throwing clean pairs of socks and folded underwear into it.

“There,” he says, apparently satisfied. “Get your phone and wallet and shit. We've gotta get out of here.”

“I have work in three hours.”

“Hey. Hey, look.” Kylo finally seems to register Hux's objections. He gives him a look of frank pleading, eyes wide and stunned in a way that resembles his lost-boy photo in the paper, hands held up and clasped in front of his face. “You do this for me, I'll make it worth your while. Anything you want, as much as you want. Fucking, sucking, whatever. I'll tell you I love you. Shit, I mean literally whatever you want. Let's just get out of here.”

“I can't just leave.” Hux sits down on the edge of his bed, scrubs both hands through his hair and down over his face, pauses with his palms pressed into his eyeballs as if he can blur Kylo right out of his vision, just get him to disappear if he sits here long enough.

“Why not? No one would miss you.” Kylo grins at the reaction that gets, and Hux feels chagrin like a physical sensation, a sudden and uncomfortable rush of blood to his face. No one would miss him. He's nobody. Faceless, connectionless, a lonely man in a stupid gray uniform. Jesus fucking christ, he's all alone.

“A week,” Hux concedes. He clears his throat, repeats. “I can give you a week. Get you where you want to go. If that'll help.”

“All right.” Now that Kylo's gotten what he wants, he's subdued. Businesslike. Slinging the strap of Hux's duffel bag over one mighty shoulder, pocketing the Volvo keys. Then the two of them are out the door, down the stairs as quietly as humanly possible, into the back alley where the sedan is parked, surrounded by drifts of garbage and dead leaves. Empty fertilizer buckets lying on their sides. A wheelless tricycle, a broken rake. The inside of the car smells like dust and garbage, but it starts right up when Hux turns the key in the ignition.

The streets are deserted at this hour, silvery and surreal in the predawn light, everything suddenly unfamiliar, like Hux doesn't know where he is anymore, like Kylo- slouched in the passenger seat, either pretending to be asleep or actually asleep with the side of his head pressed against the window glass-- has the ability to rearrange the world around him. This is stupid, Hux knows, might very well be the stupidest thing he's ever done and he's never really been the kind of man who gets accused of thinking with his dick but honestly there's a first time for everything and Kylo's presence is still as intoxicating as it was the first three times, even if all he's doing is passing out in Hux's car.

“Where are we going, anyway?" Hux stops the car at the last set of lights on Main Street, aimed south and east. He elbows Kylo until he slumps upright, more or less alert, blinking as if at a Martian landscape, as if nothing he's looking at resembles anything he's ever seen before. “Do you have a plan or anything?”

“West. Just go west.” Kylo immediately leans back into the door and starts snoring, and Hux pulls onto the highway. West, out of town. There are mountains out there. Resorts and vacation cabins and quaint little inns and restaurants for tourists, and not much else. The Vermont border. Tiny kitschy towns tucked cozily into the weird shadow of the green hills. Hux keeps driving, drives as if he doesn't remember ever doing anything else, and Kylo mutters to himself, twitches forlornly, sleeps on. Hux fights back the urge to touch him, to rest one hand on his knee while the other hand operates the steering wheel. Hux doesn't even really look at him except out of the corner of his eye at traffic lights and stop signs, and then only long enough to ascertain that Kylo's still breathing.

It's midmorning when he crosses the border and pulls into a gas station. Kylo stirs, undrapes himself from the seat, starts to stretch and make low morning noises.

“Where are we?” he says. Hux is fiddling with a recalcitrant gas pump, eyeing the Volvo's tires. At least the weather's been nice, that's a point in favor of whatever the hell it is he's doing out here.

“West.” Kylo nods, and settles down again. “How far west are you going, exactly?”

“Far as I can get. If you need to dump me off, I'll hitch, but I know you don't want to do that.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“You want me to be in your debt. To owe you. You could make me suck you off twelve times a day if you wanted to.”

“I don't want—”

“I don't give a shit what you want.” Silence, for a long time. Then Hux realizes he smells coffee.

“Breakfast?”

“What?”

“We should eat something. Come on.”

“We can't. Keep driving. Still too close.”

“Too close to what?” It occurs to Hux to wonder exactly how big old Vulture Claws' sphere of influence is. He could have agents everywhere, networks of spies, his claws sunk deep in the flesh trade on several different continents. Then again, if he's really some kind of Mafiaesque porno kingpin, shouldn't he have been able to make Kylo disappear? Maybe it's more of a standard ex-boyfriend situation, and Kylo's just prone to dramatics. Dramatics that involve Hux taking a leave of absence from work and driving him halfway across the country in a shitbucket Volvo with no air conditioning and a slightly more than half-functioning radio. Which Kylo's now messing with instead of answering Hux's question, twiddling the dial past blips of static and snatches of song, settling on nothing, but leaning forward intently like he's trying to crack a safe, like there's a station somewhere out there broadcasting something with the power to change his future and redeem his entire fucking life if he can only find it.

Hux slumps back down in the driver's seat. There's an old Grateful Dead song on the radio, beamed ghostly across the mountains, dipping and wavering and cutting in and out and Kylo's moving his lips over the lyrics, not like he's singing along, just sort of sullenly chanting under his breath like it's a spell that'll get the two of them out of this mutual mess they're in.

“What about the girl?” Hux says, more to himself than to Kylo, not expecting him to know or care what he's talking about this long after the fact.

“The girl.”

“Rey. I met her.”

“She sucked your dick.” Kylo says this without prurient interest, but Hux catches him licking his lips. Brief flick of his tongue over the corners of his mouth, like he's thinking about going down on Hux himself. Remembering that night in Hux's apartment, Kylo on his knees and Hux feeling like his last beleaguered brain cell just got sucked out of him through his dick.

“Not for nothing.” No answer, just Kylo shaking his head and looking vaguely disgusted. “Isn't it dangerous? Leaving her with him?”

“She can take care of herself.”

“And you can't?”

“Not the same situation. I've got family, she doesn't.” Hux thinks that sounds sort of backwards, but he isn't sure Kylo would appreciate him pointing out flaws in his logic.

“You said...” Hux still doesn't exactly want to argue, but the fact that Kylo's been speaking almost exclusively in deadpan cryptic pronouncements since this thing got under way is starting to stick in his craw a little. “You said you were dead to them. What can they do to you now?”

“Forget it.” Kylo switches off the radio, switches it back on again, prods at the dusty cavity where the volume knob used to be. “Hey, let me drive for a while.”

“I'm not letting you drive.”

“Come on, you're fucking losing it. You keep looking like you're passing out. You need a nap. Go in the back and lie down and sleep and I'll drive.” It does sound tempting, of course, but, as tired as he is, Hux is always on high alert in Kylo's presence. Wired, coiled tight, ready to defend himself, and, unavoidably, a little turned on.”

“I'll drive and you can suck me off while I'm driving, that way I'll stay awake.” Hux puts the car in gear and they lurch back onto the highway. Bright spots that look kind of like fluorescent amoebas are starting to crowd into the edges of his vision, and he feels like he might throw up if he doesn't get some caffeine in his body, and he's having second and third thoughts about this whole adventure and a whole lot of misgivings that not even getting his dick sucked in the driver's seat could placate for very long.

“Good way to get your dick bitten off.” Hux sneaks a sideways look at Kylo, catches him smiling. “Here, take the next exit. I know where we're going.”

“You said we weren't far enough yet.”

“We need to stop and see this guy. It'll take like 20 minutes.”

“Who is this guy?” Hux veers into the right lane like he's never merged before in his life and takes the off-ramp doing at least 50. At the bottom is a stoplight and he pounds on the brake and allows himself to breathe an unearned sigh of relief. He glances at Kylo again, his expressionless face in profile. Somehow Hux interprets that expressionlessness as _jesus christ, look at you, you really are losing your mind._

“Guy my dad knows,” Kylo says, and that's all that Hux can get out of him apart from turn-by-turn directions through the sleeping streets of this town that he doesn't know the name of and then he parks the car on the edge of an expanse of cracked asphalt near a large Georgian house that probably used to be pretty nice but now is almost horror-movie decrepit, but in kind of an intentional hipstery way. The porch is crowded with tomato plants, and Hux stands behind Kylo when he rings the bell, feeling like a Jehovah's Witness in his work pants and wilted white shirt. He watches the door, expecting another vulture, but the guy who answers it is... well, not ancient, and pretty attractive, smooth brown skin and short-cropped black hair just starting to go gray and a neatly trimmed mustache above a grinning mouthful of straight white teeth, and he immediately pulls Kylo into a big smothery embrace and they stand there holding each other and ignoring Hux long enough for things to get pretty uncomfortable.

“Hi,” says Hux, when they finally break apart, and the guy claps him on the shoulder and grabs his hand and shakes it like he's overjoyed to see Hux too, like nothing could possibly make him happier than some sweaty half-dead ginger showing up on his porch at ten in the morning with-- if Hux's interpretation is correct- the hot young thing he definitely used to fuck. Hux follows the two of them into the front hall, swaying on his feet and patting at the wall to steady himself and trying not to look like competition.


End file.
